Charities decry UK plan to use AI to assess age of young asylum seekers

The Home Office has awarded a contract to use AI facial age estimation technology on young asylum seekers whose age is disputed. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The Home Office has awarded a contract to use AI facial age estimation technology on young asylum seekers whose age is disputed. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Charities decry UK plan to use AI to assess age of young asylum seekers Coalition of more than 100 organisations says move could lead to more children ending up in adult detention facilities A coalition of more than a hundred refugee children’s organisations has said controversial plans to use AI to assess the age of young asylum seekers could lead to more children wrongly ending up in adult prisons or detention centres. The warning follows a Home Office announcement on Friday of a contract to roll out AI facial age estimation technology on young asylum seekers whose age is disputed. A report from the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium seen by the Guardian before its release in June raises the alarm about the risks of using such technology on young people who do not fit the norms of others in their age group. The consortium, whose member organisations work to promote and protect the rights of refugee and migrant children, say that as a result of trauma, under-nutrition and the harrowing journeys the young people have undertaken to reach safety means AI assessment is complex. The report – Benchmarks and Borders: the use of facial age estimation to assess the age of unaccompanied young people seeking asylum – does not rule out the use of AI altogether, but cautions against relying on it and says it should not be a substitute for comprehensive age assessments carried out by social workers. It urges the Home Office to use AI in an advisory rather than determinative capacity, with a range of safeguards built in including access to an appropriate adult, legal advice and a right to challenge decisions. It urges government not to replace the human errors made in some age–assessment cases with machine error. Age assessments of this group of young people is complex, especially as the majority of lone child asylum seekers coming to the UK are aged 16 or 17. According to Home Office data, young asylum seekers are more than twice as likely to be recorded as children in assessments by social workers than those carried out by immigration officers at the border, with more than two-thirds assessed to be minors. The Home Office’s announcement places significant emphasis on adults making “fake claims”, pretending to be children and attempting to “game the system”, but it does also acknowledge the need to safeguard minors. View image in fullscreen Two children are accompanied up a beach in Gravelines, France, after failing to board a dinghy attempting to cross the Channel in April. Photograph: Tom Nicholson/Getty Images The minister for border security and asylum, Alex Norris, said: “For too long, a